Reviews

05 Oct 2020

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing. »

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12 May 2009

Verdi and Boito at the Rome Academy of Santa Cecilia — Angels and Demons in an Unusual Setting

By sheer coincidence, the Academy of Santa Cecilia — one of the most authoritative symphonic orchestras in Europe — planned a rather unusual concert in the same days (May 3-7) when just in the very same auditorium there was the world première of a movie expected to be a Hollywood blockbuster — the thriller titled “Angels & Demons”.  »

12 May 2009

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk — Opera Australia

For two years following its premiere Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsesnk was one of the most often performed contemporary operas.  »

12 May 2009

Kate Royal at Wigmore Hall

Soprano Kate Royal is reported to have said that singing at the Wigmore Hall is “like a religious experience”.  »

12 May 2009

Janáček: Jenůfa and Kátya Kabanová

Recorded four years apart, these two classic recordings of Leos Janáček's dramatic masterpieces now reappear in Decca's The Originals series, thankfully still with full librettos and excellent booklet essays.  »

12 May 2009

Verdi’s Requiem in Santa Fe

Christine Brewer Commands Performance in Last Minute Appearance »

07 May 2009

Franz Lehár: Das Land des Lächelns

Doris Sennefelder's booklet essay for this CPO recording of Lehar's Das Land des Lächelns details how close the composer was to Puccini.  »

05 May 2009

Opera Atelier does it as it was

It’s an odd day in opera when the bad girl wins, but that is only one thing that makes the Opera Atelier production of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea remarkable — and admirable.  »

03 May 2009

The End of Bewilderment — The New Florence-Valencia Production of “Gőtterdämmerung”

April 29th is Zubin Mehta’s birthday. As a gift to its most beloved musical director, Florence unveiled a new production of Götterdämmerung, a joint Ring Cycle venture with the Valencia Opera started two years ago.  »

29 Apr 2009

Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” at La Fenice — Two Women in a Labyrinth

From the word “go”, the audience feels that this “Maria Stuarda” is quite different from the standard fare offered by Italian theatres.  »

29 Apr 2009

Lohengrin at The Royal Opera, London

I first saw this production in Manchester in 1981: I loved it then and love it now, despite the present hero’s un-Heldentenor qualities when compared to the glorious Peter Hoffman of yore. »

26 Apr 2009

Wolf-Ferrari: La vedova scaltra (“The Cunning Widow”).

One of the five operas Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, La vedova scaltra (1748) is a comedy about a widow’s decision to use deception to choose among her suitors.  »

26 Apr 2009

Don Giovanni at the MET with Peter Mattei

I returned to Don Giovanni firstly because I had never heard Peter Mattei sing, and friends had called him the greatest Don G since Siepi. »

26 Apr 2009

Walter Braunfels’s Die Vögel at Los Angeles Opera

The Recovered Voices series at Los Angeles Opera, in its second season, springs from James Conlon’s fascination and love for the operas of composers whose lives and/or careers came to an end under the Nazi regime.  »

26 Apr 2009

Barbers in Baghdad and Seville

Razor-wielding rascals involve themselves in romantic complications in the two sets considered here, with a fine performance of a rarity and an even finer performance of a classic.  »

26 Apr 2009

Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at Salzburg, 2008

In 2008 the Salzburg Festival intended to bring back the two stars of their triumphant 2005 La Traviata, Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko, for Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. »

26 Apr 2009

Il Piccolo Marat

Try to imagine the scenario: You’re an opera company, giving concert performances of neglected, indeed forgotten, hundred-year-old scores (no sets, no costumes, at least you don’t have those headaches), and you give young singers a chance to do their stuff once a year before a paying New York crowd actually eager to hear music they do not know, and you’ve lit on a genuine obscurity, even in the ranks of the obscure; Mascagni’s penultimate stage work, a huge success at the premiere (as his operas usually were), utterly forgotten nowadays (as, but for Cavalleria Rusticana and, on rare occasion, L’Amico Fritz, they pretty much are), and it’s never been performed in North America ever. »

24 Apr 2009

Prokofiev’s Semën Kotko Lands in Sardinia

The Teatro Lirico di Cagliari is a sparkling comparatively new building in what used to be a blighted area near to the city center.  »

22 Apr 2009

Jenůfa at the Bavarian State Opera

The Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Leos Janacek’s Jenufa is a feather in the cap of intendant Nikolaus Bachler.  »

19 Apr 2009

Pfitzner and Strauss by Staatskapelle Dresden

In the continuing series of releases to document the recorded legacy of the Staatskapelle Dresden, vol. 13 collects music by Hans Pfitzner and Richard Strauss with performances from 1939 through 1944.  »

19 Apr 2009

Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Chicago Lyric

In its new production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) Lyric Opera of Chicago has achieved a fusion of eighteenth-century sensibilities with a modern adaptation of traditional dramatic and stage techniques.  »

19 Apr 2009

Cavalli’s La Didone at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn

Perhaps I’d better just describe what I experienced, Captain.  »

19 Apr 2009

Die Walküre at Los Angeles Opera

The Los Angeles Opera audiences seem to have decided that no matter how they may really feel about Achim Freyer’s “performance art” staging of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the singers and musicians are giving them at long last a chance to hear these monumental works at the Dorothy Chandler. »

19 Apr 2009

Die tote Stadt: The Dead City Livens Up Palermo

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music drama Die tote Stadt has had a rather erratic life in major opera houses.  »

19 Apr 2009

Shagimuratova steals show in HGO’s Rigoletto

On a stormy evening in Houston (both in and outside of the house), Houston Grand Opera’s opening night production of Verdi’s Rigoletto went off with a thunderous bang.  »

19 Apr 2009

John Mark Ainsley Sings Schubert at Jerwood Hall, London

Schubert’s music ‘suggests a rippling movement and by the side of the rippling a flowering: it has the variety and unsurprising naturalness of moving water and springing herb’ (Capell) and this same naturalness and sense of flowing ease are the very qualities which make John Mark Ainsley such a special interpreter of this composer. »

19 Apr 2009

Iphigénie en Aulide at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma

Rome’s opera house was built in 1880, in the explosion of building that followed the unification of Italy with Rome as its capital.  »

10 Apr 2009

Rigoletto at the MET with Diana Damrau as Gilda

Rigoletto is the ideal first opera: a taut tale, comprehensible characters, terrific tunes, and not an ounce of fat anywhere.  »

10 Apr 2009

Angels in Frankfurt

Was Tony Kushner’s monumental play Angels in America in need of being musicalized? »

08 Apr 2009

Domingo sings Wagner

This two-CD budget series collection brings together two Placido Domingo Wagner recitals, the first from 2000, with Deborah Voigt receiving co-billing, and the second from 2002. »

07 Apr 2009

Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel

Originally directed by Brooks Riley for German television, this updated staging of Engelbert Humperdinck’s familiar opera Hänsel und Gretel is based on a production created by Johannes Felsenstein, the son of the well-known director of the Komische Oper Berlin, Walter Felsenstein.  »

07 Apr 2009

Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci at the MET

The current revival of Cav and Pag at the Met went off like clockwork, with all the comfort and reliability that implies for a repertory house and all the success these tried and true verismo stalwarts merit.  »

07 Apr 2009

Reasons to be Cheerful

London: Sue Loder reviews Alessandro and the Handel Singing Final »

06 Apr 2009

Paris: As Good As It Gets

I cursed myself for not having turned on the television sooner. »

06 Apr 2009

Benjamin Britten: Owen Wingrave

In the parlance of a Hollywood film pitch, Britten's penultimate opera might be described as "War Requiem" meets "Turn of the Screw."  »

06 Apr 2009

Nadja Michael as Salome and Tosca

Like Violetta Urmana, Nadja Michael had a substantial career as a mezzo before deciding to venture into soprano territory.  »

02 Apr 2009

Return of Ulysses in San Francisco

William Kentridge is a South African artist who works in charcoal and eraser (smudges) on paper, in small animated film and video segments (black and white), in theater, and now in opera. Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses was his first operatic project that took place in 1998 in collaboration with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Theater.  »

01 Apr 2009

Rigoletto at San Diego Opera

In the current weak economy many an opera company has retrenched its programming to present primarily the most popular operas. »

01 Apr 2009

Handel & Purcell on Special Offer at Covent Garden

If combining the anniversaries of both Purcell and Handel in one production at the Royal Opera was something of a master-stroke, then getting the Royal Ballet in on the act must have seemed to be verging on the brilliant from a commercial point of view.  »

31 Mar 2009

Rolando Villazón — Handel

When considering his next recording project, notes Rolando Villazón, the idea of working on a set of Handel arias with Paul McCreesh was “not an obvious choice.”  »

30 Mar 2009

Bloch’s Macbeth by UC Opera, London

Mention Macbeth — The Opera and most think of Verdi. Ernest Bloch took on the subject more than half a century later, in Paris in 1910, when Verdi’s version was almost as obscure as Bloch’s is today. »

30 Mar 2009

Magdalena Kožená shines in Martinů’s Juliette at the Barbican, London

Many works by Martinů will be performed in this year’s commemoration of the anniversary of his death, but it would be hard to equal the impact of this performance. Much of its success was due to Kožená, whose presence illuminated the whole opera, even though her moments on stage were fleeting. »

29 Mar 2009

Farinelli — Il Castrato

Naïve re-releases the soundtrack to the film Farinelli here in a handsome “book” casing, appending a second disc of highlights from the discography of Christophe Rousset’s recordings with Les Talens Lyriques, the artists also responsible for the soundtrack. »

27 Mar 2009

In Sarasota the composer is king

In the world of opera it’s now the director who is the top banana.  »

25 Mar 2009

Jenůfa — English National Opera, London Coliseum

Janáček enthusiasts in London have been spoiled this month: opening the day before English Touring Opera’s Katya Kabanova, David Alden’s staging of Jenůfa made a welcome return to the Coliseum following its original double Olivier Award-winning run in 2006. »

25 Mar 2009

Paul Robeson: The Complete EMI Sessions 1928-1939

Seven discs, of 170 tracks, amounting to over eight hours of music - this EMI set somehow manages to be both voluminous and narrow in its portrait of Paul Robeson. »

25 Mar 2009

Venice's Variable “War Requiem”

I had been looking forward to it for weeks — really, for years. »

25 Mar 2009

La Sonnambula at the MET

In 1831, when Vincenzo Bellini composed this pastorale full of characters who never express any but sincere emotions (with the exception of Lisa, the calculating flirt), he certainly intended them, and their feelings, and therefore their story, to be taken seriously – or he would not have given them such seriously lovely music.  »